A tale of TWO trails
Volunteers are the key to maintenance
Arkansas is lucky to be the home of not one but two jewels in the realm of long-distance hiking trails. The Ozark Highlands Trail and the Ouachita Trail draw hikers from across the country and around the world.
Last year, Sophie Dumortier traveled from Switzerland to backpack the OHT. I had the pleasure of meeting her when I volunteered to pick her up at the Van Buren bus station and shuttle her to Lake Fort Smith State Park, the western end of the trail.
Dumortier is an experienced long-distance backpacker. She had extensively researched the OHT, studying Tim Ernst’s “Ozark Highlands Trail Guide” from cover to cover. She also read every recent post her online search pulled up from hikers who had been on the trail. She knew the locations to mail re-supply drops and convenient exits to take for needed breaks. She had become quite an authority on the trail.
However, during our conversations, when I asked her if she knew who maintained the trail, her response was something along the lines of, “What do you mean?”
I’m sure most people who set boots on the OHT or OT do not give much thought to who keeps the trail maintained and hikeable. Hikers play a pivotal role in the world of hiking trails. If people like Dumortier were not using and enjoying trail networks, there would be no need for trails. Hikers are needed and much appreciated.
But there are others who fulfill a fundamental role with The Natural State’s hiking trails. As the old African proverb states, “It takes a village.” Periodically, someone needs to pull back the curtain to remind the world who these dedicated village members are.
THE OZARK HIGHLANDS TRAIL
The Ozark Highlands Trail was dedicated as a National Recreation Trail in 1984. The seed for it was sown in the 1970s when the U.S. Forest Service began discussing a plan to build a trail that hikers could use to explore the Ozark Mountains.
With funding from the U.S. Forest Service, the first spade of dirt for the OHT was turned in 1977. Trail construction was performed by various government-funded youth employment programs, such as the Young Adult Conservation Corps and Youth Conservation Corps.
In the initial couple of years, all was going as planned; trail construction progressed, and the secondary goal of providing young people with meaningful work experience and needed earnings was being fulfilled.
However, in 1979-80, with only about 40 miles of the originally proposed 164 miles of trail completed, the program’s funding ran out, and construction came to an abrupt halt.
The following year, a commu
nity of ambitious hikers within the Arkansas Trails Council began to search for a way to complete the construction of the OHT and also extend it to the Missouri state line. At that point, the OHT would connect to the Ozark Trail in Missouri, which was also under construction.
At these meetings, Ernst, a renowned Ozarks-based wilderness photographer and outdoors enthusiast, floated the idea of organizing a group of volunteers to take over construction. In the fall of 1981, with a defined objective to build, maintain and enjoy the OHT, the Ozark Highlands Trail Association was created.
With Ernst as the OHTA president, he led monthly work crews to resume construction of the trail. Over the years, OHTA volunteers have contributed hundreds of thousands of hours of labor to complete and maintain this special trail.
“OHTA volunteers were not only building the trail,” Ernst says. “We also took over designing the actual route of the trail. The fact that it was designed and built by hikers is one of the leading factors why the OHT is one of the country’s most admired long-distance trails.”
The first OHTA outing included members who went on to become major trailblazers within the hiking world: includes members who went on to become major trailblazers within the hiking world: Ken Smith led the way in the design and construction of the Buffalo River Trail; Scott and Carolyn Crook opened Northwest Arkansas’ leading hiker supply headquarters, Pack Rat Outdoor Center; and Ernst not only built and maintained hiking trails but also wrote many trail guidebooks to help others enjoy them.
Over the years, the OHTA has grown to more than 450 members. Fortunately, as club officers have stepped down from leadership roles, others have stepped up to fill their positions.
In 2023 alone, the group devoted more than 5,000 volunteer hours to the trail. The Forest Service supports their efforts by providing tools and training, but the OHTA and its volunteers are responsible for maintenance of the trail.
Today, the OHTA continues its mission to cross north Arkansas and join Missouri’s Ozark Trail. Members like James Hodges have stepped up, dedicating untold hours of time and labor to closing the remaining miles of the OHT to the border. The “village” continues to grow.
When the remaining OHT miles and those of the Ozark Trail are completed, the 700-mile-long Trans-Ozark Trail will join the Appalachian, Pacific Crest and Continental Divide trails as destination trails for long-distance hikers.
THE OUACHITA TRAIL
The Ouachita Trail arrived at a similar destination but followed a somewhat different path to get there. In the early 1970s, Art Cowley, Ouachita National Forest recreation staff specialist, stopped by the office of John Archer, the Jessieville District ranger, to tell him about a new state-funded program called Green Thumb. Under the program, the state hired and paid workers, and it was the Forest Service’s responsibility to furnish work projects.
The program was similar to what the Forest Service initially used to construct the OHT. However, it differed in that rather than employing youths, Green Thumb recruited senior citizens to supplement their income.
Cowley’s plan was to use this workforce to build a foot trail across the Ouachita National Forest. With Cowley plotting the route, each Ouachita National Forest ranger district managed a Green Thumb crew of five to eight hard-working senior citizens to construct the trail. Thus, the Ouachita Trail was born.
The 223-mile trail was designated a National Recreation Trail in 1978, and construction was completed in 1981. With a western terminus at Oklahoma’s Talimena State Park and an eastern boundary at Pinnacle Mountain State Park, it was Arkansas’ first long-distance hiking trail.
The Forest Service continued as the OT’s primary custodian until the ice storm of 2000 wreaked havoc on the state’s forests. The heavy weight of the thick layer of ice toppled countless trees statewide. As a result of the ice storm, the Forest Service was overwhelmed with work projects. They were forced to walk away from maintaining the OT temporarily to focus on higher-priority projects.
During this time, Kris McMillen and Jim Gifford were among a group of hikers who found themselves climbing over fallen trees that blocked the trail for mile after mile. They kept saying, “They should do something about maintaining the trail.”
McMillen and Gifford were discussing the lack of maintenance when they realized, “They, the people who use the trail, are the ‘they’ who should do something.” The group met with the Forest Service to discuss becoming involved with trail maintenance. The Forest Service believed it was a wonderful idea, and Friends of the Ouachita Trail (FoOT) was founded. They have continued to collaborate with the Forest Service on maintenance of the trail since 2005.
Although FoOT was not involved with the initial construction of the OT as OHTA had been with the OHT, it serves a similar role as the “keeper of the trail.” Both are nonprofit organizations whose volunteers are responsible for keeping the trails open.
Both have divided their trail into 1-mile sections. Members adopt and assume responsibility for the maintenance of their sections. The adopters include individuals, families and businesses that use the work trips as team-building exercises. I have maintained my section of the OHT, from Potato Knob to Ragtown Road, for over 30 years. I plan to pass the section on to my nephew.
The $25 membership fee is waived for members of FoOT who volunteer 10 or more hours of maintenance annually. They also have a program for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to work on the trails but do want to help support them. For a $300 donation, their name will be included in the list of adopters.
FoOT currently has the OT broken down into 77 sections. Most have volunteers assigned to them. For the orphaned sections not adopted, FoOT uses donations to hire crews to maintain them. This way, the entire trail is maintained.
FoOT currently has more than 200 members who completed more than 3,000 volunteer hours of trail work during 2023. Like OHTA, FoOT hosts an annual fall base camp. Designed to accomplish trail-clearing activities, it also serves as a social gathering of like-minded individuals to celebrate everyone’s contribution.
Donations and financial support are greatly appreciated and needed to keep the two trails maintained. However, volunteers are the foundation of the trail system. That is what is most important.
“FoOT’s success in stewarding these special resources relies entirely on our volunteers sharing their time and talents,” says current FoOT President Matt Edwards. “Whether it’s working on the trail, record-keeping or fundraising, there is a volunteer opportunity in our organization to fit everyone.”
BECOME THE ‘THEY’ WHO KEEP ARKANSAS’ TRAILS CLEAR
The Forest Service was inundated with work in the ice storm’s aftermath, even without the responsibility of reopening the OHT and OT. It would have taken many years before they could have resumed trail maintenance duties. By that time, Mother Nature would have reclaimed the trails.
I joined several of the OHTA outings that took on the massive task of reopening the OHT trail. In the 30-plus years I’ve volunteered, I have never witnessed devastation of that magnitude in a forest. Downed trees stacked on top of each other totally blocked the trail. It was like someone had dropped a box of tree-size pick-up sticks in the forest. Our crews would chain saw an entire day and be lucky to clear half a mile of trail.
If not for the hard work performed by OHTA and FoOT volunteers following the 2000 ice storm, I do not believe the Ozark Highlands Trail or the Ouachita Trail would exist today.